How To Get More People To Use Your Lettings and Estate Agency Blog

Look at your website – now go and look at your five biggest competitors agents websites… go on. Do they have .... Name of the agent at the top … then a navigation bar with various links which are probably Home / Buy / Sell / Rent / Thinking of Selling / About Us / Search for Properties / Contact Us Have you noticed they are very similar in structure? .. if you changed the colour and font – be honest – what is materially different from all five websites? All agents have a website, All agents go on the portals, All agents do brochures, All agents have for sale/to let boards .. are all agents the same? The General Public see all us agents as synonymous, interchangeable, one and the same to each other.. and if we are perceived to be the same by our client base – then they only thing they can judge us on is a fee ..… no wonder people are attracted to the cheap as chips listing agents (oops Estate Agents) Purplebricks and Yopa … The world has changed in the last 15 years ....

The world has changed. I can say that without any hesitation. Things have changed since the t’interweb became omnipresent, since social media sprang up and took over our lives’, since newspaper advertising became deceased, since the mobile phones became glued to our hands, since Rightmove and Zoops are the places where people search for property, since ordering online became the norm (and my Mrs is adding the Amaz0n delivery guy to our Christmas card list). But what hasn’t changed? People. I was at a meeting yesterday with 30 franchisees of a well-known estate and lettings agency. All of them were saying they were struggling with doubts about trends and marketing shifts in UK estate and lettings agency and were worried about which tactics still work, where they work and when they work All I said was this … We have lost sight of the fact that we are still dealing with people whose wants and needs and tacit desires haven’t changed at all. The issues,...

Part 3 of a series of articles about the problem with UK Estate Agency Today  (in case you missed it – links to  Part 2 can be found here ). In Part 1,  I said don’t be a local property expert, be the  authority  –  in Part 2 – Told you not to tell people you are an authority – just  prove it.   In Part 3 - I want to tell you that you shouldn’t be part of the local property scene – you need to be  the local property scene How many of you know someone who has degrees and letters after their name? Many of you. You need to be pretty smart to get letters after your name ..but letters after your name doesn’t make you smart … doesn’t make you a brilliant estate or letting agent – far from it. If you want to be  THE  Property Authority, the PROPERTY GURU that people flock to (see Part 1), you have to get people to talk about YOU. Look at the smart people in life, the Sir Richard Branson’s of this world. He is an Authority a...

The 5 back seat drivers that are holling you back in life, estate agency, and everything from Europe's No.1 Action Coach - John Cottrell - who will be speaking again at Sanjfest. No holds barred .. 50 minute video of the Europe's No.1 Business Coach (as Voted by the World's No.1 Business Coach from Action Coach) It will make you think Some parts you wont like .. depends if you want to be honest with yourself? https://youtu.be/6__OExjy4Uo

Lettings - Whilst you don't need a Degree in Brain Surgery, it's not as simple as riding a bike either. With the unending array of landlord and tenant law, the complexity of s21, and the dynamics of tenant and landlord relationships, it can be a delicate business.   I will say, though, that our profession does a great job at providing a service that simplify lettings for landlords.    If it's simple, it's because we as a profession have fought hard to make it such.    But here is a thought - even if the landlords can eventually come to say that work in the lettings industry is simple; that doesn't mean that the work is easy.    It's often not the difficulty of the work that makes it hard to do.    Often, it's not that we don't know how to do it ...  it is  that we lack the courage necessary to do it.    Sometimes, it can be hard to make that call. To give notice to that ten...

That would be some football match score! Part of my job is going round the Country giving talks / seminars / workshops to groups of estate and letting agents. The amount of nectar points I am collecting with the train miles I am clocking up – I will be able to have my Christmas shopping for free – I’m even on first name terms with train drivers! Anyway, I was at conference the other week where I was asked to give the key note speech to the Managers and Directors of this 17 office network. However, in the morning, we had break out sessions. My breakout session was about the threat of online/hybrid estate agents. What the people didn’t know is that for the last year, I have been carrying out a monthly check on 43 locations around the UK on the number of properties that the online/hybrids have been putting on. Each month, over the last year, in each of those 43 locations, I have gone onto to Rightmove and added up the new listings. As I was in the North, the...

Part 2 of a series of articles about the problem with UK Estate Agency Today  ( in case you missed it - links to  Part 1 can be found here ). Don’t say you are a local property expert, prove it. Many Estate and Letting Agents are wondering why business isn’t booming. You are doing leaflet dropping, flyers, social media, sponsoring the schools etc etc.. and still its like banging your head against a brick wall .. why isn't business booming?  Of course it wont boom if you do that Forget social media * , forget landing pages, forget about pay per click, forget about “lengthening the conversation.”  Screw conversation.  Preach instead. Preach about everything you know, about things only you know, about astonishing insights that you’ve come up with.  Imagine that every post you wrote was  required  to bring in one listing or one sale for you.   You would write differently, wouldn’t you?  Too bloody right you would...

It’s tough out there, being a letting or estate agent. More competition from agents, less properties coming on the market. Hell ..It’s really tough out there and quite often, it isn’t enjoyable being an agent either (not like the old days). I don’t know about you, but I want to enjoy my work, I want to really enjoy it and get better at it. Not only do I want to work better, I want to get better at what I do every day. I have no desire to be the agent everyone is gunning for, be it my Area Manager or Branch Manager saying my figures could be better or being successful and having agent touting my business like its ‘all-you-can-eat buffet’ and my stock list is free to any Tom, Dick and Harry to tout, pinch, pilfer and general steal with sharp, underhand and sometimes, darn right lies. Wouldn’t it be easier if all us agents could